In 2012, First Nations partnered with the Office of the Special Trustee for American Indians (OST) to offer the $pending Frenzy with Colville youth. The $pending Frenzy is an interactive financial education workshop that allows tribal youth to practice budgeting and spending a large lump sum of money. Developed by consultant Shawn Spruce and First Nations Development Institute, the workshop’s popularity has skyrocketed over the past three years and more than a dozen tribes have adapted the $pending Frenzy model for their tribal youth.

At Lake Roosevelt High School, students received $40,000 in play money to pay for real-world-like expenses such as rent, utilities, car payments and insurance. Additionally, students learned to budget money for educational expenses such as tuition and books.

Students also learned how to manage their Individual Indian Money (IIM) accounts, which they can access when they turn 18. They learned about current IIM interest rates versus commercial banking interest rates, what their account options are, and how to best manage their monies.

Tribal leaders and educators on the Colville Indian Reservation have experimented with a number of different financial literacy models for tribal youth. According to Fiduciary Trust Officer Margie Hutchinson, “The $pending Frenzy has been the most effective model so far. Students and teachers love it. In fact, we are planning more workshops in April and May for our other high school students.”

More and more tribes like the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Indian Reservation are making financial education classes and workshops mandatory for tribal youth. For more information about hosting a $pending Frenzy workshop in your community, please contact First Nations Program Consultant Shawn Spruce at agoyopi@gmail.com.

Growing up in Adair County in rural northeastern Oklahoma, Brian Ross was a shy, soft-spoken teen until a high school speech class changed his life forever.

“My parents forced me to take speech to get me out of my shell and build confidence,” he confides. “I hated it at first, but once I got in there and became comfortable speaking I discovered that speech gave me a forum and an outlet for self-expression. Moreover, I realized the power of communication and how it could make a positive difference not only in my life, but also within my family and my community.”

Jump ahead a couple of decades and Brian has made good use of the skills he honed in his youth by serving Indian Country within the U.S. Interior Department’s Office of the Special Trustee for American Indians, or OST. As OST’s recently appointed Director of Financial Education, Brian has plenty of opportunities to communicate responsible money management. The new position, created by Special Trustee Vince Logan, has raised the bar in terms of OST’s longstanding commitment to financial education, especially programs targeted to Native youth. Brian describes his job as part of a multi-faceted strategy to expand financial education opportunities throughout Indian Country and beyond, including:

Building a unique platform from which to launch various financial education initiatives such as youth outreach, curriculum, and financial coaching.

Creating lasting synergy with partners that include tribal governments, nonprofits, schools, and other federal agencies dedicated to financial education.

These topics are personal to Brian. As a child he witnessed tremendous poverty and what he calls needless suffering in one of the poorest counties in Oklahoma. And while he acknowledges that financial hardships can be a personal choice, he believes the underlying cause is often a lack of knowledge and available resources. Later, while attending college, he became frustrated by the fact that no financial education services existed for students and he was forced to seek out his own financial role models. One of these individuals was his Cherokee grandmother.

“My grandmother had only a fourth-grade education when she was forced to leave school and go to work,” he explains. “She grew up poor like so many in those days and her parents couldn’t afford to buy her a new dress to go to church. She had to wear a potato sack instead. But she understood the value of a dollar and taught me to be conservative with my money because you never know when you might need it for something important. I hope I can set an example that inspires my 14-year-old son in the same way.”

In addition to money smarts, Brian also encourages young people to pursue their dreams. He followed his dreams in his early 20s when he moved to California to explore an acting career. The experience provided another opportunity to tap into his love for communication and culminated in credited roles in several feature films as well as a brief stint on the soap opera “The Young and the Restless.”

Brian has come a long way from the timid student who shuddered the first time he had to speak in public. When asked to provide any tips for others who struggle with formal presentations, he offered the following advice:

“I speak best when I’m able to tell personal stories. People relate to them better, especially the stories that they can see themselves in. It’s also important not to focus on yourself, the presenter, but on your audience instead. Focusing on yourself is distracting, but when you care about your audience and they can see it, you become a dynamic speaker.”

On a final note, Brian points out that, just like with public speaking, there are no magical solutions to handling money wisely. Furthermore, he says OST will not create any new financial education concepts or gimmicks with any of the aforementioned initiatives.

“A budget is a budget,” he explains. “Nothing we invent will take the place of hard work and personal responsibility, but we will strive to present the best tools available to assist people in making smart financial choices. I’d also like to point out that OST has a fiduciary responsibility to people with Individual Indian Money (IIM) accounts and tribal leaders, but we don’t stop there because not everyone has an IIM account. I’m available to talk to anyone any time about financial education and I’ll even provide my cell number. I also encourage people to learn what’s available. Whether you are a tribal leader, an individual OST beneficiary, or any other member of Indian Country, we want to work with you and are building our resources with that in mind. OST plans to show up at every venue in 2015 in a big way.”

Interested in partnering with OST to bring financial education to you community? For more information feel free to contact Brian directly on his cell at (918) 977-0848 or by email at brian_ross@ost.doi.gov.

In January 2013, First Nations concluded another successful Building Native Communities train-the-trainer event in Albuquerque, New Mexico. We were joined by many of our friends from the Office of the Special Trustee for American Indians (OST), along with a high school financial-education teacher and representatives from tribal housing programs. It’s all part of our mission to provide financial education to Native American people so they can be financially empowered and better control their financial destinies.

As part of our work funded by FINRA Investor Education Foundationand the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, First Nations provides Building Native Communities train-the-trainer events. First Nations often partners with the Office of the Special Trustee to conduct the train-the-trainer workshops. The goal of these workshops is to provide training for OST Fiduciary Trust Officers and other employees, and high school teachers who teach financial education to predominantly Native American students. First Nations is partnering with OST officers because they often provide financial education resources to their clients, many of whom are the recipients of Individual Indian Money (IIM) accounts or other tribal trust programs. In an ongoing partnership with high school teachers in McKinley County, New Mexico, First Nations also reached out to teachers who have participated in other First Nations youth financial-education programs such as the Invest Native online challenge and the Crazy Cash City reality fair.

At the recent training, we had 10 OST officers from all across the country, a high school teacher from McKinley County, and five other tribal employees from the Pueblo of Laguna and Pueblo of Nambe. The two-and-a-half day event took place at the Office of the Special Trustee for American Indian’s headquarters in Albuquerque. It served as an introduction to the Building Native Communitiessuite of workbooks and training materials including Financial Skills for Families participant workbook, 4th edition, and the Investing for the Future workbook. The train-the-trainer workshop also served as a forum for financial educators to share ideas, resources, and experiences.

On the final day of the training, participants took part in First Nations’ money reality fair, the “$pending Frenzy,” which is designed to address the needs of Native American youth who will be receiving a large tribal per-capita or minor’s trust payment. The experiential learning model is designed to give kids a trial run at what it’s like to have a large sum of money and give them a chance to practice making smart spending decisions. The purpose of the simulation was to demonstrate to participants how to disseminate financial education topics in a fun and interactive way, and learn how the workshop could be offered to adult participants, as well.

Additionally, on the final day, the participants were required to practice-teach some of the lessons they learned over the past two days of training. On participant evaluations, many stated that this task was especially helpful, including one person who claimed: “It was very helpful to have us teach a practice session. It brought up issues we might not have anticipated when teaching a course for the first time.”

Many of the participants are already making plans to use the skills and information they acquired at the training. Some of these activities include facilitating a $pending Frenzy for high school students, making use of a presentation on managing expenses and modifying it for a youth financial fair presentation, and a housing entity employee creating informational materials for one-on-one counseling sessions.

“The training was packed with valuable information and it was a very engaging learning environment,” noted one participant on an evaluation form.